Three-time Madan Puraskar winner Satya Mohan Joshi defies old age and its constraints, surrounding himself with the metaphors and similes of folk traditions he came across, and was transfixed by, in the rural areas of Nepal over six decades ago. Folksong remains his best friend and source of inspiration. [break]
“What did the forest nightingale eat?
What did it wear?”
A collection of folklore that he published after touring the villages landed him his first Madan Puraskar. More awards followed in a vigorous life that saw him wear the hats of folklorist, numismatist and archaeologist.
Folklorist by accident
“I wasn´t trained to study folklore. I fell in love with it by accident,” said Joshi, sitting upright on a cane sofa at his residence at Bakhoonbahal, Lalitpur. The room was littered with books. A statue of the Namo Amitabha looked on while he rummaged through a rich memory, appearing overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of his life´s experience.
Joshi was born at Bakhoonbahal on May 12, 1920. He did SLC from Durbar High School and his higher studies at Tri-Chandra College, where he earned his BA degree.
In 1943, the late Bhim Bahadur Pandey, father of bank promoter Prithvi Bahadur Pandey, persuaded the Rana prime minister of the day that the country needed a government department to study the agricultural approaches popular in Nepal and the availability of raw materials in the villages.
That led to the establishment of the Department of Industrial and Commercial Intelligence, which later evolved into the Central Bureau of Statistics.
Five positions were created for the department and for the first time in the nation´s history a job vacancy notice was placed in a newspaper, the Gorkhapatra, which was then a weekly. About 20 people applied, and Joshi was among those selected.
In the four years that followed, Joshi, who had gotten married in 1941 and had never left the Kathmandu Valley, journeyed through Tanahun, Lamjung, Kaski, Bara, Bardiya, Kailali and Kanchanpur.
“Being newly married, it was difficult for me to live alone in the villages,” he said.
But he found consolation in folksongs and the observation of village customs. He watched young Magar girls do the Chudka dance and was amazed by the freedom that Magar folks allowed their daughters.
“Back then, even in Kathmandu, dancers were always males. Finding a man who looked feminine enough to take up the role of a woman dancer was always a problem for dance instructors,” he said.
Other surprises were in store for Joshi, such as the Rodhi tradition of the Gurung community. He watched dohori singers carry on for seven days and nights in a row. And during the Second World War, when whole villages in Lamjung were emptied of their youth to fight the Germans, he heard the women sing,
“Raise the cows for forest tigers
Raise sons for German aggressors.”
“Folksongs touched me deeply,” said Joshi. “I realized how detached Nepali literature was from folk tradition,” he said.
With encouragement from poet Gopal Prasad Rimal, Joshi published his “Hamro Lok Sanskriti” in 1956. The work earned him the Madan Puraskar and transformed him from someone in government service to a man of letters.
In 1959, the Nepali Congress won the country´s first parliamentary elections and BP Koirala became prime minister. The Koirala government set up the Archeology and Culture Department (now Department of Archaeology) and appointed Joshi its director.
“I got the appointment only because I had won the Madan Puraskar,” he said. “I knew nothing about archaeology.”
Nervous about his new assignment, he met then Home Minister Surya Prasad Upadhyay and confessed to him his ignorance of archaeology. “He asked me whether I was really the person who had written the book that won a Madan Puraskar. I said yes. He then said I would know what to do as director of the department,” Joshi said grinning.
During his two years at the department, Joshi set up the Bhaktapur National Museum, held an exhibition of coins ranging in periods from Manadev to King Mahendra, and held the first ever Nepali cultural exhibition in Bombay as it was then known.
The coin exhibition led to his second Madan Puraskar winning work - Nepali National Currency, published in 1960.
But the royal coup of 1960 ended his tenure at the archaeology department. Several years of financial difficulty followed, and he sold his “Nepali Varnamala” to Ratna Pustak Bhandar for just Rs 300. Four editions of the popular textbook went to press in its first year of publication. But he could make no claim to royalties.
In 1971, a five-part work on Sinjakhola of Jumla district, where the Nepali language originated, was published by a team of five researchers including Joshi. The work won the Madan Puraskar, Joshi´s third.
“The work was just a case study. I feel proud that a cultural study of every district of the country could produce at least five volumes,” he said.
Life´s Lessons
Joshi is not a typical disillusioned 90-year-old. On the contrary, he would be delighted at many more decades of active life.
As Chancellor of Nepalbhasha Academy, he recently set up the Arniko Art Gallery in Kirtipur, the product of his six years as Nepali language instructor in Beijing, China between 1963 and 1970.
“Contentment is the surest cushion for life´s disappointments. And contentment comes from philosophy,” he said.
For Joshi, the folksong about the nightingale that flies from tree to tree with no though for food or warmth is the biggest source of contentment.
“That nightingale is my philosophy tutor,” he said.
bikash@myrepublica.com
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